Oh boy.
This thing. This thing is a jape and a half. I know we don’t usually do it this way but I’m going to start with the box.
“Microtech,” my pinfeathered ass. And I’m sorry, is that… is that the Philosoraptor?
It is, isn’t it?
Alright, so there have been a ton of attempts to make a karambit knife portable, practical, or otherwise able to be put away in some manner. Various methods of folding, some clever, some less so. Well, here’s how this one does it:
That’s right, it’s an out-the-front karambit. Double action, too. In and out. It is immensely satisfying.
This bears no official model number or designation, and as you can imagine the actual manufacturer isn’t specified anywhere on it, nor its box. But its seller did render it “Mi Crotech” in the product description, just like that with a space in it. Probably so they don’t get the banhammer for trademark infringement. It was of course only a couple of bucks from China and if you ask me it’s well worth the price of admission.
And this knife is huge. 5-7/8" long retracted, 8-1/2" deployed. The blade is about 3-1/4" long with a wicked talonlike curve in it and yes, that means that the switchblade track inside also has to be curved. The blade is 0.110" thick and the entire knife is a meaty 0.542" not including the clip. It’s not very sharp and the blade is made from who-knows-what, but that’s really besides the point. The body, at least, is aluminum which is what you want on a cheapo OTF. That’s because the plastic ones tend to break quickly. I don’t foresee this one having that issue.
It does have a clip, a meaty one that’s not reversible. It’s mounted at the back, along with the actuation switch so you can fire it off with that cool guy reverse grip. There’s just one minor problem with the clip, which is that for right handed users at least it’s on the wrong side of the knife.
If you carry it in the typical way, first of all a lot of it is left sticking out. But the biggest issue is when you draw it it’ll be backwards, with the switch on the wrong side for you to reach it. If you’re a lefty, though, you’ve got it made in the shade.
It is heavily spring loaded and fires with a forceful and satisfying thwack. As a double action out-the-front it is theoretically possible to misfire but I haven’t had it happen yet despite fiddling with it hundreds of times so far since I got it. I didn’t have to do anything to the action out of the box; no lubricant, no tuning. I haven’t even bothered to take it apart yet and I’m honestly not sure I will. The lockup is remarkably solid and there’s surprisingly not much rattle in the blade in any direction when it’s deployed. Which is practically unheard of in a cheapo Chinese auto.
Where it falls down, of course, is in the blade grind. And probably the steel, too, but we’ll never know. (The product description claims it is “D2.” If you believe that, might I also interest you in this deed for the Great Wall of China?) This came with practically a butter knife edge from the factory, and the machining in the blade is visibly very crude. Our old friend is here indeed, familiar old highly visible unpolished machine marks all down the bevel. The blade is partially blackened, partially exposed steel. It is incredibly pointy, to its credit, but that won’t help you open your mail.
You’ll have a rough time sharpening it, too, because as is tradition the edge geometry is way out of whack. A fair bit of material will have to be removed to get both sides of the grind even. And inward curving karambits are hard enough to sharpen to begin with, while it’s functionally impossible to do so if all you’ve got a flat whetstone. You will have to use some manner of rod sharpener on this, or maybe one of those horrible drag-down-the-edge zip sharpeners. This might actually be one of the only valid use cases for such a thing, actually.
The gargantuan nature of this knife really cannot be overstated. It’s not a slasher movie prop; it’s a slasher movie villain all by itself. I Know What You Did In Shenzen.
The Inevitable Conclusion
This is glorious crap and I love it. This knife is absurdly stout and a blast to fiddle with. You like it for exactly the same reason you like B movie schlock. It’s not meant to be great, and that’s exactly why it kind of is.
The only problem with it is it’s not especially competent at the knife part of being a knife. It’s dull, fixing that will be a bitch, the layout is wonky for carry, and you wouldn’t want to anyway. It also wasn’t very cheap in objective terms, for being “cheap.” $22 American freedom bills were spent on this, and while I’ve certainly gotten less for that amount of cash at various points in history, even just in recent days we’ve seen how I’ve gotten more.